National League basketball coming to Virginia from September

Basketball

Paul Fitzpatrick

A huge crowd turned out at the Virginia Show Centre on Saturday morning as East Cavan Eagles Basketball Club announced their intention to apply to Basketball Ireland to join the Ladies National League for the 2022/23 season.

Eagles Basketball Club was founded in 2012 to promote the sport of basketball and has grown from initially having six teams and 90 players to catering for 350 members with 19 teams and a coaching staff of 53 willing and able volunteers.

In recent years the club has excelled at various different age groups and the aspiration of entering the National League came one step closer when coach Bernard Sheridan led the senior ladies team to success in 2020 when they captured a National Intermediate title.

“Today’s announcement is the culmination of years of work, both on and off the court,” said club chairman Graham Tolan.

“When the Club was established ten years ago, proper structures were put in place to grow basketball from the grassroots up. This vision has provided the foundation which has allowed us to develop our players from underage all the way up to senior level.

“We have now arrived at a point that we have a really good ladies team and equally important, a feeder system which will ensure that our venture into the National League won’t be short lived.

“It is fitting that our Senior Ladies Coach is Carol Vershcoyle who with her husband Ray, was one of the founding members of the Club, and that Padhraig and Laura McEvoy, who were also founding members, continue their ongoing association and support of the club with the announcement of a three-year sponsorship of our National League team by McEvoy’s SuperValu.”

Eagles Ladies Team will progress from competing in the North East League to playing against the biggest and best clubs in the country.

“This year we added two very important teams, a Masters team for our Over 40s, mainly parents, and an inclusion team for kids with additional needs and they have been a great success,” said Tolan.

“We have had a lot of success locally over the years. Two or three years ago we went into a national competition and we won it, that was the ladies intermediate cup, and that was a really big step for us.

“The school won a national title at U16 A level which was incredible so building on that success, all those kids are coming through now, we have that feeder system so now we are going to apply to join the National League.”

A number of criteria have to be met in order to accepted into the National League, he explained.

“The criteria are that you have to be good enough first of all and we met that because we won the ladies double this year, the cup and the league, and last year. We have a few underage internationals that are coming of age as well.

“You have to have the proper structure and proper finances in place and we’ve worked for the last 12 to 18 months to get that. We’ll apply and I think we’ll be successful because we have been in communication with them, so that will see us starting in September. We’ll be playing against teams from all around the country.”

The move from Virginia College to the Virginia Show Centre, in which a state of the art new floor has been installed, was necessary in order to increase capacity.

“Virginia College is a fantastic facility and we work really well with them but in order to get into the National League, you have to increase standards and spectator capacity is a big thing. We started a conversation with the Show Centre two years ago about developing a floor here and they have secured funding and done that.

“When I say it’s the best in the country, I’m not exaggerating. It’s an Olympic standard floor,” he said.

“If you watch the NBA now, it will be a different brand but the same floor. In the Olympics, it’s the exact same floor. It’s removable and it allows for multi sports, handball, indoor soccer, badminton… Irish dancing as well. It’s FIBA level one, it’s really top class. We’re looking forward to having a full house here. It will be a game-changer for the region.”

In further exciting news, Tolan confirmed that the Eagles will be recruiting two overseas players in order to bolster their squad.

“We will be bringing in a player from America and a player from Europe. We’re going to put them up here in the local area and they are going to play with the team and be involved in our schools programme,” he said.

Funding

The installation of the new floor was made possible by Leader grant funding acquired by the Show Centre. Barbara Olwill, Virginia Show Centre Committee, explained how excited they are to be involved in this latest initiative.

“It’s diversifying the use of our events centre. We have a lot of activities going on and it’s quite focused around the agricultural show and the rural projects that we would have going so this is a new dimension for the Show Centre.

“We have prided ourselves on having a multi-use facility and incorporating all the community groups in the east Cavan area and basketball is one more group to add to that big family of groups who come and use our facilities.

“We are delighted to bring in a sporting element which is something we probably lacked, while we had the space and capacity within our events hall, we mightn’t just have had the facilities right. I think this is going to broaden the use of the centre, particularly among the younger age groups.

“It will be marvellous for Virginia, this has the potential to put Virginia on the map in sporting terms. We are ideally located, we are on the national route that links Dublin to northern areas and we link in really well with all the infrastructures. We are delighted with it and happy to facilitate it.”

Minster Humphreys said: “I am absolutely delighted to be associated with East Cavan Eagles bid to join the Ladies National League and I wish them every success as they become the first Club in the region to enter this prestigious competition.

“I also wish to applaud East Cavan Eagles and the Virginia Show Centre who, with the assistance of the Leader programme, have realised their vision of developing a top class multisport facility at the Virginia Show Centre. The new sports hall, which will benefit the whole community, is a template on how facilities should be developed for multi-purposes. It is fantastic to see how the Show Centre Arena, which is more accustomed to hosting agricultural exhibitions, has been transformed in to a sporting facility that would rival any in the country.”